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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap..r__L. Copyright No. 

ShelfJiAS 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




DOWN AT THE WHARVES.' 



WHALERS AND WHALING 



BY 



NANNIE BELLE MAURY. 



PUBLISHED BY 

H. S. HUTCHINSON & CO. 

New Bedford, Mass. 

1896. 




COPYRIGHT, 1896, 

BY 

H. S. HUTCHINSON & CO. 







WHARF SCENE NEW BEDFORD.— WHALER JUST ARRIVED. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



«, i 



Facing 
Page. 

"Down at the Wharves." Frontispiece. 

Wharf Scene New Bedford — Whaler Just Arrived. 2 

"An Old Figure Head." ---------- 10 

The Stern is cut as vSojjare as the End of a House." - - - 14 

Ship James Arnold Hove Down for Repairs. - - - - - 18 

Oil Stored Waiting a Favorable Market. - - - - -22 

A Venerable Horse Hair Sofa." -------- 26 

Bark Platina Starting on a Three Years Cruise. - - - - 30 

The Deck of a Whaler Just Arrived. ------ 34 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS — Continued. 



Facing 
Page. 

Wharf Scene Showing Barrels of Oil. ------- 38 

Old Whaler Progress on the way to the World's Fair. - - - 42 
Sperm Whaling — The Chase. ---------46 

Sperm Whaling — The Capture. -------- 50 

Right Whaling — Cutting in the Whalebone. - - - - - 54 

Cleaning Whalebone on a Whaler. 58 

A Captain in his Arctic Outfit. -------- 62 

Whaleship "Young Phoznix" Beset in the Ice. - - - - -66 

Breaking up an old Whaleship. 68 

Wharf Scene New Bedford. --------- 72 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 



Down at the wharves of New Bedford, Massachusetts, there is 
a collection of the queerest looking old ships, which instantly attract 
your notice. So quaint, and so entirely unlike any craft one sees 
afloat nowadays, that you know in a minute they must be the old 
Whalers that used to make such perilous voyages, and have such 
thrilling adventures fifty years ago. 

There they lie, — these old heroes, — huddled together in a group, 
as though to keep each other company and talk over the days of 
their youth, when they were the pride and glory of New Bedford, 
and famous ail over the world. Impudent modern steamboats and 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

tugs bustle in and out close by, making them look still more weath- 
er beaten and deserted by comparison. You can't help feeling that 
they must be sensitive and unhappy at being put on the retired list, 
and clean forgotten in spite of the fierce battles they have fought 
with the winds and waves, and the fame they have won for their 
native City, which owes chiefly to them the wealth and prosperity 
she enjoys today. 

They are not large vessels. The largest does not measure 
more than 125 feet long, and the bows are ornamented w T ith curious, 
battered old figure heads, like those you read about in tales of the 
sea. The stern is cut as square and straight as the end of a house, 
and the masts, which were painted white originally, have turned a 
sort of hoary grey, and have bits of rigging still clinging to them 
and waving forlornly in the breeze, like an old man's thin wisps of 
hair. The copper sheathing of the sides and bottoms has been torn 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

off most of them, leaving exposed the rotting wood underneath, all 
marked and seared by the nails which pierced it, and of a vivid 
green color, saturated through and through with the copper from the 
constant action of the salt water upon it. The New Bedford people 
cut this wood off and sell it at a high price, for it makes a wonderfully 
beautiful fire, and is much in demand. 

Late in the evening when your oak logs have burned themselves 
down to a glowing bed of embers, is the time to throw on a few sticks 
of drift wood — as they call it. Instantly, lovely blue, green and violet 
tongues of flame spring out as if by magic, popping up, now here, now 
there, and dancing like little sprites conjured out of the old storm-beaten 
wood to tell of years of toil and danger, of long voyages round Cape 
Horn and in tropic seas, of weary winters, locked in the Arctic ice, and 
of all manner of strange experiences which lent a hand in preparing 
this mysterious, iridescent fire on your hearth. 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

The hulls of some of these old Whalers are painted in imitation 
of a man-of-war, with square black spaces on a white ground which, at a 
distance give exactly the effect of the ports where the guns poke through. 
This was done as a protection in time of war, so that other vessels 
would be shy of attacking them. 

The whaling industry received a terrible blow from the discovery 
of petroleum which has taken the place of whale oil in Commerce, the 
latter being now used only for lubricating purposes. On the New Bed- 
ford wharves today there are barrels and barrels of it waiting for a favor- 
able market, carefully protected from the weather by masses of dried 
seaweed packed closely around them, very much as they pack excelsior 
around china. 

Whaling is kept up nowadays on account of the bone, which 
commands very high prices as it becomes more and more scarce. (It 
is worth three dollars per pound, and has gone as high as six.) No- 

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THE STERN IS CUT AS SQUARE AS THE END OF A HOUSE." 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

body has been able to find or invent anything to take its place, so the 
whalemen still make three year voyages around Cape Horn and up to 
the frozen Arctic Seas, risking their lives for the sake of the ladies who 
would never look so slim-waisted and so trim were it not for their cour- 
age and endurance. 

When I arrived at New Bedford the other day, two Whalers had 
just come in. The Canton, from Hudson Bay where she spent a year 
and a half, and had all her Copper sheathing torn off by the ice she 
cut her way through, and the "James Arnold," from a voyage of two 
years and a half around Cape Horn. This last one is a famous old 
Whaler, a hero of many voyages, and is known as a " Friday Ship," 
because, in defiance of time honored superstition, she was launched on 
Friday, started on her first voyage on Friday, and completed her record 
by capturing her first whale on the same unlucky day. 

A few days later, a bark came sailing up Buzzards Bay, and 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

proved to be still another whaler, which dropped anchor right along 
side her battered comrades at New Bedford. The wharf was all bustle 
and excitement as the crew came ashore in the fur coats and caps 
they had worn in the Arctic regions, and eagerly scanned the assem- 
bled crowd for the faces of parents and friends. One poor fellow 
looked solemn and forlorn, although he was met by his mother, for 
he was sick with scurvy, and had to be taken home in a carriage. 
And mighty lucky he was to be landed in his own town instead of 
some port hundreds of miles away, where there was nobody to care 
for and look after him. 

The crew numbered twenty-four men, all told. They had been 
away a year and a half, and spent all the winter before hemmed in by the 
ice of Hudson Bay, where they were constantly tantalized by seeing hun- 
dreds of whales, but could only capture three on account of the ice. The 
young boat steerer who told me with pride that he had harpooned and taken 

18 




SHIP JAMES ARNOLD HOVE DOWN FOR REPAIRS. 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

two out of the three, said it was simply maddening to see them in such 
numbers, and not be able to get at them. He was a fresh faced, blue eyed, 
sandy haired Scotchman, ruddy and strong, and looked as if he thoroughly 
enjoyed his life of hardship and danger, as he eagerly showed us the very 
harpoon he had hurled into one of his whales, and the lance — sharp- and 
keen as a razor — which had pierced its vitals. " It went in up to there," 
said he, pointing to a bent place about half way up the iron handle. 

"Why does the boat steerer always throw the harpoon?" I asked 
him. "The officer in the bow does the killing, why doesn't he throw the 
harpoon too?" The young Scotchman threw back his head and laughed. 
"They wouldn't trust a man to steer the boat close enough to the whale 
unless he had to throw the harpoon," said he; "you see, he's got to steer 
right up to her to get it in. If he didn't have to do that he might lose his 
nerve and sheer off too soon if he got scared." 

It brought the whole thing very vividly before one, to talk to 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

this stalwart young sailor who had been through it all himself so re- 
cently. This was his first voyage as a boat steerer, so he w r as more 
than willing to answer my eager questions, and explained lots of 
things I had always wanted to know. For instance, why the whale 
boats are steered with one oar instead of a rudder, as is invariably 
the case in the pictures in the geography. He told me that a boat 
could be suddenly sheered around and managed much quicker when 
steered by the oar, because she must have a certain amount of for- 
ward motion, "steerage way," — as they call it — before she can answer 
to a rudder. Also why a whaleship carries three of her boats on 
one side and only one on the other, which doesn't look shipshape 
and trim. " They have to leave space for a whale to be hauled along- 
side and cut in," explained this most typical jolly tar, who was kept 
in a perpetual grin at my amusing ignorance. 

What a strange sensation it must be to come back from one 




OIL STORED WAITING A FAVORABLE MARKET. 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

of these long voyages, — three or four years they lasted in old times — 
not knowing whether your nearest and dearest are alive or dead, or 
what other changes may have befallen. One of the sailors of this 
very Whaler was met by the news that his father had died last summer. 

And that reminds me of the story of a young fellow who was 
obliged to sail from New Bedford on the day his mother was buried. 
Everybody felt so sorry for him and his poor old father left alone 
in his sorrow. Three years later the son returned and was met on 
the wharf by the old man who gave him a hearty slap on the back, 
and said jovially, "welcome home lad, come up to the house and 
let me introduce you to your mother." 

It is all very fine and poetical to talk about a "life on the ocean 
wave," and the "jolly tar/' and that sort of thing, but none of us 
have the least idea of a whaleman's real life, and its dreadful hard- 
ships, until we go on board a whaler just in from a voyage. In the 

25 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

first place the whole vessel is reeking with oil and dirt. Must be, 
unless the voyage has been a failure. The penetrating smell is already 
in your nostrils before you step on board. Little streams of oil trickle 
sluggishly down the deck. The rigging is soaked with it, the gang- 
ways are slippery with it, the very air seems saturated with fishy oil. 
This particular Whaler was a small one, about ninety feet long, and 
her cabin and sleeping accommodations were a revelation not to be 
forgotten. We entered a miniature saloon with a folding table in the 
centre, and dingy casters overhanging it. This was where the officers 
took their meals, and here, as everywhere, the atmosphere of oil pre- 
vailed. Opening into this dining-room, and occupying the extreme end 
of the ship, was the captain's cabin, about the same size as the saloon, 
or even smaller. (Seven feet by eight, by actual measurement.) A 
venerable old horse hair sofa with its hind legs sawed off, to make 
it fit the sloping wall, was firmly lashed across the square stern, it's 

26 




A VENERABLE HORSE HAIR SOFA. 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

length being the exact width of the apartment. One chair, and a 
rusty stove completed the furniture. These two cabins were flanked 
on either side by the sleeping quarters of the Captain and his Mates. 
Dark, bad smelling cupboards with two wooden shelves one above the 
other for bunks. They were in every way suitable accommodations 
for the rats and roaches we were told to look out for. 

When I realized that these were the swell apartments, so to 
speak, I began to wonder what sort of a place the sailors slept in, 
and wondered still more a few minutes later when I was invited to 
descend a ladder into a black hole in the bow of the ship, from which 
arose an indescribable odor, that made one's stomach quail. 

"I wouldn't advise you to come down," said a sailor at the 
bottom of the ladder, who had been packing his sea chest to go ashore, 
and I took his advice, and stood peering down into the darkness with 
my handkerchief to my nose, trying to imagine what it must be like, 

29 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

to sleep in such a fearful place. No light, no air, except through the 
tiny hatchway which is often fastened down in rough weather. Four- 
teen men packed together there like sardines every night for a year 
and a half. 

The views of the cabin and forecastle of this whaler were taken 
by an enterprising photographer, who even descended into the fear- 
some black hole above mentioned, with his camera, and took a very 
successful flash light picture of the sailors' bunks. 

It doesn't seem likely that a man would ever adopt whaling as 
a profession if he were initiated at first into this state of affairs. But 
a whaler just starting on a voyage, is as spick and span as fresh paint 
and hard scrubbing can make her, so the green hands come to it by 
degrees, and since prosperity means dirt to a whaleman, he soon gets 
used to it. 

It takes about thirty thousand dollars to fit out a whaler for a 

3° 




BARK PLATINA STARTING ON A THREE YEARS CRUISE. 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

long voyage. Every emergency must be anticipated and provided for, 
and the stores and provisions stowed away with a lavish hand, for 
who knows how long the good ship may be cut off from fresh sup- 
plies? So into the hold go one hundred and fifty barrels of salt beef, 
seventy-five barrels of salt pork, thirty barrels of flour made up in 
bread, twenty barrels of uncooked flour, three hundred gallons of mo- 
lasses, two hundred pounds of coffee, five hundred pounds of sugar, 
and corresponding quantities of meal, rice, beans, dried apples, butter, 
cheese, ham, codfish, tea, raisins, vinegar, sperm candles, fresh water, 
oak and pine wood, staves, heading and iron hoops for barrels, riv- 
ets, sheathing, copper and yellow metal, sheath nails, coppering nails, 
tar, cordage boat boards, pine boards, flags, bricks, lime, canvas, cot- 
ton twine, cotton cloth, tobacco, white lead, linseed oil, paint, liquors, 
gun powder, and Heaven knows what besides. 

And here let me say, before I forget it, that the crews of these 

33 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

Whalers are not paid wages as on ordinary vessels. From the Cap- 
tain down, each man has his "lay," which means a certain percent- 
age of the amount of oil and whale bone taken during the voyage. 
The Captain's lay, for instance, is generally about one barrel of oil 
to every fourteen taken. The first mate's lay is about one in twenty- 
four, the second mate's one in thirty, and so on, according to rank, 
the figures varying with the state of the market and the size of the 
ship. Of course the men are not paid actual oil and whale bone, 
but in the amount of money represented by their share of the cargo. 
The average Whaler has a crew of about thirty men, selected 
with the greatest care, for on their skill and endurance, the success 
of the voyage depends. The Captain must be a man of long expe- 
rience and tried ability, with a little knowledge of medicine and sur- 
gery thrown in, so that he may care for the poor fellows who have 
a leg or an arm torn off, and their bodies horribly lacerated by the 

34 




THE DECK OF A WHALER JUST ARRIVED. 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

cruel teeth of a whale. Then there are three or four mates, also men 
of great experience and courage, and qualified to take command if 
anything should happen to the Captain. Next in rank are the boat 
steerers. Brave hardy seamen, they must have proved themselves be- 
fore they can be trusted to do their perilous work. Stout of heart and 
quick of hand, to elude the awful death which constantly threatens 
them. Then the steward and cook, the cooper, who is also a jack 
of all trades and can turn his hand to anything, and the sailors, who 
are graded as seamen, ordinary seamen, and green hands. 

Poor green-hand ! He little knows what is in store for him 
when he enlists for his first voyage, and steps aboard with smiling 
face and beating heart to begin a career which promises something 
so much more thrilling and fascinating than the uneventful, dull rou- 
tine of his life at home. The first damper on his enthusiasm is prob- 
ably when he is conducted to the forecastle, and follows his little sea 

37 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

chest down into the stuffy black hole where he is destined to sleep 
cheek by jowl with a mighty queer assortment of humanity. Foreign 
sailors, negro sailors, men of all types and tempers, and all degrees 
of badness, — and perhaps goodness, too. The young green hand needs 
all his father's teaching and his mother's prayers to keep him un- 
tainted in such an atmosphere. What else will save him from drink- 
ing and swearing as his comrades do? 

They tell a story in New Bedford about a green hand who was 
so bad and so smart that the fame of him still lives. He became 
utterly demoralized during his first voyage and was forever getting 
into scrapes, but by his cleverness and quickness he managed to es- 
cape many a well deserved flogging by saying witty things that made 
the Captain laugh and put him in a good humor. One day the young 
sinner was sentenced to the cat o' nine tails and agreed to submit 
quietly to his punishment if they would only let him speak to the 

38 





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WHALERS AND WHALING. 

Captain first, (it seems that the Captain had a mortal aversion to cats 
and couldn't bear the sight of one,) and the boy when brought be- 
fore him had a wicked twinkle in his eye as he said demurely : 
"A cat, I am told 

In abhorrence you hold ; 

Your honor's aversion is mine. 

If a cat with one tail 

Makes your stout heart quail 

Oh ! save me from one that has nine." 
His wit saved him. 

The first night of a voyage all hands are called aft to tell off 
the watches and select the boat crews, and the Captain reads aloud 
the rules and regulations to be observed aboard ship. On the first 
calm day the boats are lowered and the green hands taught their 
places and trained at the oars. Each boat has a crew of six, the boat- 

41 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 



steerer, four oarsmen, and one of the mates in command. As the ship 
nears her cruising ground, one or more of the sailors are sent up aloft 
to look out for whales, and any old seaman will tell you that they often 
fall asleep up there. It sounds a good deal like a sailor's yarn to 
a land lubber, standing on deck and gazing up at the dizzy height 
where, fastened horizontally in the rigging are several iron rings, about 
the size of barrel hoops, through one of which the jolly tar slips his 
body, so that the ring comes just under his arms like a circular life 
preserver, as indeed in a way, it is, while his feet rest on a sort of 
little perch, which is only a piece of board lashed securely to the rig- 
ging. There he sways to and fro, like a bird on a perch, as the 
ship rolls and pitches, and there, — they tell us — he falls asleep. Be- 
lieve it if you can. 

Presently he sings out, " there she blows ! " and instantly the 
whole ship is in a commotion. "Where away?" is the cry from the 

42 





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OLD WHALER PROGRESS ON THE WAY TO THE WORLD'S FAIR, 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

deck. "Two points on the weather bow." "Keep your eye on her," 
shouts the Captain, "sing out when we head her right." As soon 
as the vessel is near enough to the prize the Captain gives the order 
to " stand by, and lower the boats." Sometimes two or three will 
go for one whale, and often there is a most exciting race between 
two boats belonging to different ships, for the one that first gets a 
harpoon in, and makes fast to the whale, claims the prize. Off they 
go, these brave fellows, rowing with all their might and main towards 
the monster spouting in the distance, who with one whisk of his 
enormous tail can send them all to Kingdom Come. 

The boatheader watches his chance as they draw near, and 
hurls the barbed harpoon, which has a small but very strong rope 
attached. The head of the weapon turns as it enters the whale's 
side, and fastens itself there the moment the rope is pulled taut, 
and in this way the boat is made fast to the whale. The mate in 

45 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

command — who now takes his position in the bow — drives his lance 
in, and as its keen edge pierces the creature's vitals, and he begins 
to struggle, the mate shouts at the top of his voice "Stern all! Stern 
all ! for your lives ! " 

But a whale takes a lot of killing, and the lance does not 
always strike into his vitals. Even the explosive bombs which they 
fire into him nowadays have to be repeated sometimes over and over 
again before the creature dies. When he begins to spout blood in- 
stead of water, they know a vital part has been struck, and his dying 
agonies commence. Sometimes he darts away furiously, tearing through 
the water like an express train with the little boat spinning along 
behind him at such tremendous speed that they often have to cut loose 
to keep from being swamped. Sometimes he spins round and round, 
lashing the sea into seething white foam and upsetting a boat or 
splintering it into kindling wood if it comes within reach of him, or 

4 6 




SPERM WHALING— THE CHASE. 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

even biting it right in two with his terrible jaws. Or perhaps he 
suddenly dives down into the depths of the ocean, making the har- 
poon rope whizz over the bow of the boat at such a rate that they 
have to keep pouring water over it to prevent the friction from set- 
ting the wood afire. As an old seaman once remarked to a green 
hand, (who had just been witnessing these stupendous convulsions for 
the first time,) "Whales has feelings as well as anybody. They don't 
like to be stuck in the gizzards and hauled along side, and cut in, 
and tried out, in them 'ere boilers, no more than I do." 

As soon as the whale is dead, he is hauled to the side of the 
ship and secured there by chains. The carcass often measures more 
than two-thirds of the vessel's length. No more sleep for the sailors, 
nor rest for the weary until the "cutting in" and "trying out" are 
accomplished, and the oil and whalebone safely stowed away in the 
hold. The blubber — or fat — which surrounds the whale's body is about 

49 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

a foot thick, and full of oil. The men cut it in huge unbroken strips, 
into which blubber hooks — as they call them — are fastened. 

The sailors at the windlass aboard ship, now begin to hoist, and 
the huge strip peels off as the carcass rolls over and over. As soon as 
a piece — reaching sometimes nearly as high as the lower mast head — 
is got over the deck, it is severed from the body with big knives, 
and cut in small pieces which are thrown into the big iron "try 
pots " set in a sort of square brick furnace on the forward part of 
the deck. 

To have a steady fire going day and night on wooden decks 
streaming with oil, and with tar covered rigging and cordage on every 
side, is a pretty ticklish business. Underneath the try works is a tank 
of water called a " pen," which is watched with increasing care, for 
if it should spring aleak and run dry, the ship would be enveloped 
in flames in five minutes. Strange to say, this ever threatening dan- 

50 




SPERM WHALING.— THE CAPTURE. 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

ger seems to be the one which least often overtakes whalemen. 
And now the tidy ship is in a state of messiness and filth be- 
yond words to describe. The men are soaked with odorous oil from 
head to foot, and their faces are so smeared with black from the smoke 
of the try works, that you can't tell a negro from a white man. The 
sails are black, the rigging is black, everything reeks with fishy oil ^ 
and if a man is a genuine whaleman — and has a cast iron stomach — - 
he loves it and glories in it. 

All this time the ship is surrounded by flocks of sea gulls r 
petrels, and magnificent swanlike albatrosses, screaming and fighting 
each other for fragments of the feast, which they devour with a vo- 
racious greed that seems altogether out of keeping with such beautiful,, 
graceful creatures. (Like a pretty woman eating too eagerly.) They 
say these birds flock from far and near, no matter if the carcass be 
a thousand miles from land. 

53 



WHALERS AND WHALING, 

Whales vary in size, of course, but they are often sixty and 
seventy feet long. Some of those of the northwest yield two hundred 
barrels of oil apiece. The huge tongue is a mass of white fat, and the 
sailors say it looks like a great white satin cushion A single tongue 
has been known to yield twenty-five barrels of oil. 

To the uninitiated, the whale's anatomy seems ridiculously out 
of proportion. Here is a monster with a tongue weighing fifteen hun- 
dred or a thousand pounds, and an ear so small that the opening will 
hardly admit a knitting needle, while its eyes are no larger than those 
of a cow. The whalebone of commerce is found in the mouth, in 
long flat slabs, about ten inches wide where they join the skull, and 
from eight to ten feet long, tapering to a point at the end. These 
slabs are set very close together something like the slats of a Venetian 
blind, and hang perpendicularly downwards from the roof of the mouth 
which is completely filled with them, the whole quantity in a large 

54 



4 f- - *-*'' 




RIGHT WHALING.— CUTTING IN THE WHALEBONE. 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 



whale sometimes amounting to nearly two tons in weight. The inner 
edges are fringed with a sort of coarse hair which acts as a trap and 
catches the tiny fish it feeds on. The creature swims along with open 
jaws, and as the water flows through, the little fish become entangled 
in the fringe. And here again one is struck with the whale's appar- 
ent disregard of the fitness of things. A star fish feeds on another 
fish so near his own size that he can hardly swallow it. A whale 
eats a minute red shrimp not half an inch long. 

Sperm whales are armed with teeth, and have no bone in their 
mouths, but they yield the best of oil, and are found in tropical w r aters. 
It is in the jaws of the "right" whale that whalebone is found, and 
they abound chiefly in Polar seas, hence the fact that the Arctic Ocean 
is the great cruising ground today. The curious substance called am- 
bergris which is used in the manufacture of fine perfumery, comes from 
the intestines of diseased sperm whales, and is supposed to be the result 

57 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

of indigestion. It is very rare and valuable, and sells for three hundred 
dollars a pound. 

In the palmy days of whaling, when voyages often lasted four 
years, and no submarine telegraph brought news from home to distant 
lands, each whaleship when she went out, carried letters and messages 
to fathers and husbands far away, in case their ship should be spoken, 
and when two whalers met on the high seas, they would lay to, 
sometimes for hours, the crews exchanging visits and letters, comparing 
adventures and having a rare old gossip together. A " gam," as they 
call it. Gam means gossip. One can well imagine the joy of these 
chance meetings — and the sorrow too — if some poor fellow heard of 
the death of wife or child, as must occasionally have happened. Now 
and then the Captain took his wife with him on one of these long 
voyages, and New Bedford women thought nothing of going round 
Cape Horn or up to the Arctic Ocean. 

53 




CLEANING WHALEBONE ON A WHALER. 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

Whalers and whaling have not stood still any more than the 
rest of the world, and although the life I have been trying to de- 
scribe still exists, and quaint whaling barks still sail from New Bedford, 
the live industry has been transferred from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
coast, and enterprising San Francisco is now its chief port, where big 
steam whalers are fitted out for the Arctic Ocean. The first steam 
whaler was built for Capt. William Lewis, of New Bedford, in 1879. 
She was called the "Mary and Helen" after the two daughters of 
one of her principal owners, and sent to San Francisco the following: 
year for Arctic whaling. About that time came the news of the loss 
of De Long — the Arctic explorer — and the Government bought the 
"Mary and Helen" for a hundred thousand dollars, changed her name 
to the "Rogers" and sent her in search of that dauntless and ill- 
fated officer. 

A steam whaler arrived in San Francisco some time ago from 

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WHALERS AND WHALING. 



a cruise of nearly three years in the Arctic Ocean, where she took 
sixty-nine whales. The voyage was a most profitable one, and the 
owners of the vessel expect to clear about one hundred thousand dol- 
lars. Each seaman's lay amounts to a thousand dollars or more, it is 
thought. She brought about one hundred thousand pounds of whale- 
bone. The record of her trip shows that the whaleman's life is as full 
of danger and adventure today as it ever was. One of her crew was 
frozen to death while hunting, and the sailor who accompanied him 
had both feet so badly frost bitten that they had to be amputated. 
The operation was successfully performed by the Captain of another 
whaler, who offered his services as an amateur surgeon, and did his 
best with the few crude instruments at hand. 

New Bedford has long ago invested the spoils of her old whalers 
in big cotton and yarn mills, and become a prosperous manufacturing 
city, but now and then one comes across a suggestion of the days 

62 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 

when she was the greatest whaling port in the world, and her male 
population — as somebody has cleverly put it — "was divided into three 
classes. Those who were away on a voyage, those who were just re- 
turning from one and those who were preparing to start on one." 
Many of the oldest houses still have the Cupola on top where the 
owner used to ascend, spy glass in hand to look out for an expected 
ship, and some have a most curious device for telling which way the 
wind blows without going outside to see. A round dial marked with 
the points of the compass, and with a movable hand like a clock, is 
fixed to one of the ceilings and connected with the weathercock in 
such a way as to register its every variation. How characteristic of 
an old sailor to feel that he must know the direction of the wind the 
minute he opens his eyes in the morning. 

Much of all this is a twice told tale. Must be, from the very 
interest of the subject. But I have ventured to hope that the details 

65 



WHALERS AND WHALING. 



which so fascinated the writer (whose ideas of whaling were of the 
vaguest description) may find here and there an equally uninformed 
and interested reader. 



[Note. — I owe the information and illustrations for this article to the kindness 
of New Bedford ship owners.] 



66 




WHALESHIP "YOUNG PHOENIX" BESET IN THE ICE. 




BREAKING UP AN OLD WHALESHIP. 



OLD WHALING PICTURES. 



Many of the illustrations used in this book are reproduced from 
large pictures of Whaling scenes of which we make a specialty in 
our Picture Department. 

We can supply these framed in Live Oak taken from old 
Whaleships if desired. 

We have recently purchased a number of curious Old Log Books, 
giving graphic accounts of Whaling Voyages, which we offer for sale. 

We are often able to supply the early prints of the famous 
Whaling Pictures of Benj. Russell. 

Correspondence solicited. 

H. S. Hutchinson & Co., 
New Bedford, Mass. 



7* 



DRIFTWOOD" FROM OLD WHALESHIPS 

FOR OPEN FIREPLACES 

Put up in Barrels and shipped to any address. 



ALSO ON HAND WHALING CURIOSITIES OF VARIOUS KINDS : 

WHALES TEETH. 

RULERS AND PAPER CUTTERS— Made of wood from dismantled whaleships. 

MALACHITE BELLOWS, &c. 



H. S. Hutchinson & Co., 

BOOKSELLERS AND STATIONERS, 

NEW BEDFORD, MASS. 



7 2 




WHARF SCENE NEW BEDFORD. 















LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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